Tweet this (and oh, they have): A Twitter IPO is coming

In a tweet heard ’round the tech world and beyond, Twitter finally announced today that it has set an IPO in motion.

The 7-year-old company’s impending initial public offering has been rumored for a while, with the buzz getting louder recently as the not-usually-so-stealthy CEO Dick Costolo — the one who for the past couple of years has kept a poker face about a possible IPO — made a speech at TechCrunch Disrupt early this week but reportedly left quickly without taking questions. Because you know, those are the rules during a company’s quiet period, which is usually 25 to 40 days before an IPO. The company did not give an indication about when it would take the Wall Street plunge.

There are other big questions surrounding the news because Twitter filed privately with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which means that none of its financial information is public yet. As the Merc’s Jeremy Owens writes, new rules under the JOBS Act allow companies to file confidentially if their annual revenue is below $1 billion. Speculation about the San Francisco microblogging company’s revenue (and valuation) abounds. As Pete Carey wrote for SiliconBeat in March, online ad and market research company eMarketer estimated global ad sales of $582.8 million, and estimated that Twitter would rake in $1 billion in ad revenue in 2014. Heather Somerville wrote for SiliconBeat in May that Twitter’s valuation was estimated at $10 billion.

Now comes the waiting for less speculation, more concrete details, just like before. In the meantime, the excited can comfort themselves with all the reaction — on Twitter, of course.